


A Miscellany There

by Omnicat



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: F/M, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:05:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4778060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicat/pseuds/Omnicat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Where have you been?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Miscellany There

He’s seen a lot of the world by now. Even not counting anything before AC 196, he’s seen more by age twenty-five than most who live to see a hundred. He’s passed through many of the Old places again since then, anyway. They looked different. Everything suddenly looked different Afterward, and the world has yet to stop changing every time he blinks his eyes. He almost feels like going back to some of the earlier New places to see how they look now. Not going to, though. It’s time the drifting comes to an end.  
  
Looks like he finally found a place where the anchor will hold. The detour was worth it, and the wait for her to arrive, and even the outrageous rates for this room.  
  
The architecture and the style of the furniture are familiar. There’s a lot of Eastern Europe in this particular cluster, like tangible remainders of the building blocks of the first colonists’ minds. The difference is distinct, but the similarities too. For years he has marvelled the endless variety of mankind’s creations - so different from the gruesome monotony of Before. Sometimes it still feels like such words don’t suit him, but _beautiful_ is the only way to describe it. Beauty is what he found when he finally figured out where to look.  
  
He’s seen so many things, met so many faces. It’s all starting to blur into an incoherent There beyond these four strange walls. He finds he doesn’t feel threatened at all, like part of him feared he might. He can feel himself sprout roots where their bodies meet, and any sense of constraint or entrapment is washed away when she calls him by a name he hasn’t used in a decade.  
  
There has been more than one woman he’s kissed like this, held like this, and they were all beautiful in their own right - incredible people doing incredible things in incredible places. He feels glad, so glad, for everything they and others have given back to him. But it all feels like a dream that’s ending.  
  
He’s come full circle. He’s waking up.  
  
_She_ doesn’t seem to have changed a bit - he’s sure he’s wrong, but she never needed to, because she’s always been the one _making_ things change, in him and everywhere he’s been so far - even Before. She’s the same woman as the girl he met and kissed when he still thought life was a nightmare with only death ahead. Maybe this is simply the first time he _really_ sees her. Maybe the world around her feels her pull as strongly as he does, and he’s witnessed her personal growth from afar all along. There’s no rush figuring it out. Now he knows what he was looking for all this time.  
  
"Where have you been?"she asks when they’ve caught their breath, and stills his restlessness with a single glance.  
  
He could name a hundred places, tell her a thousand stories. They’re all part of him now, precious and irreplaceable. Without them, he would never have found his way back here. Maybe, if she wants to, he’ll show her someday.  
  
Right now, there’s only one answer: "Gone too long." 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments on older fics will ALWAYS remain welcome.


End file.
